NFC Notes: 49ers, Rams, Aaron Donald, Seahawks

49ers

• Veteran 49ers beat reporter Tim Kawakami can’t confirm if San Francisco has been offered anything at all for QB Jimmy Garoppolo yet. 

Rams

On the to-do list for the Rams this offseason is ensuring future Hall of Fame DT Aaron Donald is back in the fold to defend the team’s Super Bowl title in 2022. Reports say to do that will require giving Donald a raise on his current deal to make him the NFL’s highest-paid defensive player, which is probably in the range of $30 million a year. Rams GM Les Snead says they’re working on a deal to try and give both Donald and the team what they want. 

“We definitely have chatted with Aaron, his representation, and we’re trying to come up with a win-win solution to reward Aaron but still definitely be able to continue trying to compete as a team at the highest level,” Snead said via Kevin Modesti of the Southern California News Group. “So, we’re in progress there.”

“I know Aaron’s articulated to us that he would like to be back, and he would definitely like to continue to try to do special things not only as an individual player but as a team,” Snead added.

Seahawks

Seahawks HC Pete Carroll said the team views QB Drew Lock as a legitimate option to replace Russell Wilson, at least in 2022.

“We loved him in the draft,” Carroll said, via ESPN. “Our guys were thrilled about him…He goes into his first year, finally plays his first five games and goes 4-1 in his rookie season. All of the promise, all that you had hoped to see, the numbers and stuff showed that he was going to have a great run in his career. The next two years didn’t work out very well. He battled his tail off and competed his tail off, but it didn’t work out. Is this a second chance for Drew Lock? Heck yeah it is. It’s an absolute clear second chance for him to take us back to where we knew him to be. We’ll find out.”

Seahawks GM John Schneider agreed with Carroll, and is looking forward to giving Lock a fresh start.

“We’ll continue to explore options,” Schneider said, “but we have a ton of faith in Drew. We’re excited about it. We’re excited about a change of scenery for him. I know a couple of my buddies were trying to acquire him all last spring and into the fall. He’s a guy that, in my opinion, the media has beat down a little bit. We’re excited to get him into our culture with our coaching staff, and we’ll continue to look for guys to compete with him.”

Carroll believes Seattle can win a championship with Lock as the team’s starting quarterback.

“If he plays like he did early on, I think we’ve got a shot,” Carroll said. “You go back to his first year when he was balling as a rookie, when he was 4-1, his third-down numbers were terrific, [he was] taking care of the football really well. It just didn’t, for whatever reason — the coordinator left after that time, times changed for him and he didn’t play to that same level. So exactly what we have evaluated, the process that we evaluated, he showed…We think he’s still that guy, and so we’ll see.”

Smith and Schneider said that QB Geno Smith is also high on their list of starting options for 2022.

“Right now, Geno knows our offense the best,” Carroll said. “If he comes back to us, he has an opportunity to run the whole thing. We saw him do it during the season. We’ve got to bring Drew along to see how far he can take it. The competition is on, and it ain’t no different from when Matt Flynn and Russell Wilson went at it [in 2012]. We’ve already been through this before, so it’s exciting to format it and see how it turns out. We’ll see where it takes us.“